BIOS: Technology Means Business

The vast majority of servers sold to small and midsized businesses today have more than 100GB of disk space, which poses a significant dilemma when trying to back up and secure that much data with old lower-capacity tape like DDS/DAT or optical media.

Not only are other tape formats and other backup mediums impractical, expensive, and difficult to manage, they can undermine the safety and security of an organisation’s long-term data protection.

Exabyte’s VXA-172 Packet Tape Drive has been designed for growing businesses and claims to deliver the best price/performance and unique expandability to keep pace with today’s needs.

Apparently the drive is the world’s first and only tape backup unit to offer expandable Capacity On-Demand, allowing growing businesses to keep pace with their data protection needs without the limitations and risks of out-dated tape formats, hard disk and DVD backup.

Built on Exabyte’s VXA Packet Technology, the VXA-172 Packet Drive and VXA-172 PacketLoader 1x10 provide affordable, easy backup and recovery for critical business information using reliable, large capacity, high-speed tape cartridges that can be removed to an off-site location for safekeeping. Unlike tape devices of the past, such as DDS/DAT and DLT tape drives that have fixed capacity limits, Exabyte’s VXA-172 products are engineered to grow as business data grows.

For as little as £400 you can have a 172GB system that can be upgraded later to near double the capacity via a simple electronic update. For even greater scalability, tape cartridges for the VXA-172 products are the only tape products available in two sizes: the X6 at 80GB and the X10 at 172GB selling for prices of £8 and £16, respectively.

The standalone VXA-172 Packet Drive provides small businesses with a simple tape device that accepts one tape cartridge at a time, with 172GB gigabytes of capacity today and 320GB Capacity On-Demand tomorrow. For organisations wanting unattended backup, the VXA-172 Packet Loader has ten cartridge slots and a robotic mechanism for automatic, unattended operation. The VXA-172 Packet Loader offers up to 1.7TB of capacity today and up to 3.2TB Capacity On-Demand tomorrow and a standard barcode reader to manage cartridges.

VXA-172 provides support for a wide range of computing platforms and operating systems. VXA-172 is compatible with all major backup software vendors, and Exabyte will offer the drives with three interface options: Ultra2Wide SCSI is available immediately. Serial-ATA and FireWire connections will be available later this year.

Exabyte VXA-172 products are available from computer resellers today. The VXA-172 Packet Drive is available for £400 and the VXA-172 Packet Loader is available for £970. The capacity-on-demand electronic upgrades will be available for around £199 for a drive upgrade and £340 for the PacketLoader upgrade. All VXA-172 products come with three-year advanced exchange (ADEX) as part of Exabyte’s standard warranty and support program.

[Best Storage Pricing UK]
[Best Storage Pricing US]

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